by Miranda Kennedy
I have heard wonderful things about India. I love Indian food and both the culture and land are intriguing. The tea plantations in the north sound wonderfully interesting as do the beaches of Goa. But for each of these wonderful things, I have heard something equally bad--the chaos, the poverty and begging, the lack of hygiene, the sectarian strife...I think it was all summed up in a story I read in an anthology once. It was about someone on their first trip to India and was entitled, "Trying Really Hard to Like India." In the end, they did not succeed. I am pretty sure I wouldn't either.
Nonetheless, virtual travel to India is still of great interest to me. Much of the travel stories I come across on India, however, focus on how the western author was transformed by a given aspect of traditional Indian culture--yoga or living in an ashram, helping the poor, meeting a wise guru... As I have previously discussed that doesn't interest me and, accordingly, I was more than a little nervous as I started this book. After all, it was written by an NPR staffer. Would I be facing another Radio Shangri-la? Was this book not for me? As it turns out, the book was for me. Because though the subtitle reads "Life and Love in India" and the book is full of life changing events, they are not those of the author. Instead this is a fascinating insider portrait of women in Indian culture.
Miranda Kennedy lived in India for a decade as a freelance reporter. During that time she met and became friends with a collection of local women from a cross section of society. Each one is very different but there are similar expectations of marriage, children, and familial duty. We see the traditional middle class through Geeta who is expected to marry as soon as possible but struggles with a desire for independence and a more modern lifestyle. The more upper class Parvati shows us the consequences of rebellion against all expectations while Radha and Maneesh illustrate what life in the lower classes and widowhood will bring. Kennedy even meets a number of Muslim women at a local gym/social center and gets a window into their very private lives. At the same time the author must struggle with her own issues as an unmarried foreign woman in that same society. As she interweaves her story with those of the other women she uses the dominant cultural medium (the plots of Bollywood movies) as a guide to the idealized expectations of society. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does and it is utterly absorbing.
I didn't read this book to understand modern India, but in some ways it offers a very realistic portrait of how rapid societal changes are affecting the every day lives of modern Indians. It is a book similar to Country Driving by Hessler, which I read a few months ago which did much the same for China. This story is more personal though, as the author provides a truly intimate view inside the household that few get. Despite the modern elements rapidly entering society, few things change slower than the culture and traditions surrounding family. There is no better, no more revealing place to examine a society. It was a pleasure to take this trip to India.
I am still not booking a plane ticket, though.
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